Embracing Jobs for Kern County
In today’s Bakersfield Californian is an excellent pro-HSR op-ed by John Spaulding, executive secretary of the Building & Construction Trades Council for Kern, Inyo and Mono counties. Titled “We must embrace the jobs at Kern County’s doorstep” it makes an excellent argument for HSR as being part of economic recovery for Bakersfield and Kern County:
The consequences of Wall Street’s Great Recession continue to hit Kern County with serious ferocity. The unemployment rate stands above 15 percent — fully 60 percent above the national average. In my industry, construction, unemployment rates are even higher, hovering around 20 percent. The underemployment rate in California, which includes workers who have slipped into the underground economy, as well as those who are seeking full-time work but can only find part-time jobs, currently exceeds 22 percent. This is an outright crisis for our community. Projections from the Congressional Budget Office show very little improvement over the next few years in the unemployment rate nationally. Luckily, Kern County and California can start to turn this dire situation around, because we are about to begin building high-speed rail.
These are Depression-era numbers, and it makes sense to embrace a Depression-era solution: build lasting infrastructure that puts people to work now and provides economic growth opportunities for years to come. Spalding understands this quite clearly:
Incredibly, there are still skeptics out there that say we can’t afford to begin the high-speed rail project. High-speed rail opponents have a laundry list of criticisms, but do they have any solutions to the county’s unemployment crisis? No. Rather than embracing jobs at our doorstep, they continue to parrot the nonsense that high-speed rail will bankrupt us. You wouldn’t know it listening to the loudest politicians these days, but Kern Country has for generations benefited from state and federal infrastructure projects like the aqueducts and freeway project that brought fresh water and new customers from other parts of the state to the southern Central Valley.
The fact is, high-speed rail is the only project on the horizon that will create the large number of jobs we need to make a significant dent in our appalling unemployment rates. Therefore, we can’t afford not to start high-speed rail. The choices are quite clear. We begin construction now, or we let other states take our high-speed rail money and our jobs. It is baffling to me that there is even a debate about the economic benefits of high-speed rail for our county.
…If we have the courage to act, Kern County will find itself the single greatest beneficiary of high-speed rail in California. By far, more track will be laid here — well over 100 miles — than in any other county. The project will greatly improve access to Bakersfield, tying our economy to the large urban centers around California. It will also begin to help clear our horribly polluted air.
Spalding understands well what is needed to put Kern County back to work: high speed rail. Nothing else comes close in terms of ability to create a lot of jobs quickly, and in this era of permanently high gas prices, nothing else has the potential to spur as much long term growth. Sure, some people talk about water, but unless they have a method to make it rain more often, it won’t matter since there’s no more water to move.
Spalding expressed incredulity that anyone would oppose this. But judging by a recent hearing in Hanford, it shouldn’t be all that surprising – most HSR opponents are simply Tea Party activists who hate all government spending, unless of course it is in the form of a direct subsidy to themselves:
With a giant tea party banner serving as a backdrop, Kings County residents dominated a California High-Speed Rail Authority hearing in Hanford’s Civic Auditorium Wednesday night with wide-ranging criticism….
“All of us here in this room are taxpayers,” said Hanford resident Paul Rohrbough. “And I’m here to say that we can’t afford this project. Financial common sense must be the rule.”
Here’s how financial common sense works. You borrow money now to build a massive infrastructure project that puts a ton of people to work immediately. That gives you a huge economic boost, without any short-term cost. Money circulates in the economy, those employed on the HSR project spend and help employ others in the community. This fuels growth and generates tax revenue. Over the long term, the economic growth created by the project – estimated at $10 billion a year for Los Angeles alone – helps sustain the economy and helps pay back the money borrowed to build the infrastructure. That’s how the debt taken on during the Depression and during World War II was repaid – paying it back did not crash the US economy in the postwar years, far from it.
Teabaggers complain about the debt causing long-term problems for the country. That’s an absurd claim, at a time when the cost of borrowing for the US government is at record lows.
The economic case for HSR is strong. Those who say it isn’t are peddling Hooverism.
The job numbers the CHSRA is throwing around for the project are ridiculous. They have basis in any kind of experience. The ARRA program ans been ongoing for several years now and there is plenty of data on just how many jobs are created in rail project.
Quite appropriate is this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skfsn3grIrI
Tony d. Reply:
September 22nd, 2011 at 9:38 pm
Why are they ridiculous? Oh! That’s right, because Morris said so.
Nadia Reply:
September 22nd, 2011 at 10:07 pm
“They say this project will create 600,000 construction jobs and 450,000 permanent jobs (Pg 112 of the 2009 Business Plan). How’d they get to these numbers?
According to the definition from the HSRA, the federal government has defined job estimations for ARRA funded projects as “a 40 hour per week, 52 weeks-a-year position equates to a 1 year job equivalent.” Using this definition, this could mean that for each person who has a one year contract and renews it at the end of each year, each renewal could be counted as a separate job. In other words, 10 contract renewals during 10 years could equal 10 jobs. That isn’t how most Americans count jobs.”
Continue reading on Examiner.com Inflated jobs numbers try to morph transportation project into stimulus project – San Francisco Transportation Policy | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/transportation-policy-in-san-francisco/jobs#ixzz1YkVOF6bU
Peter Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 4:56 am
The Examiner? Really? You’re citing to the Examiner?
joe Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 7:10 pm
Hilarious.
We need CARRD/HSR denier economics to correct for the bias in economic reporting.
HSR must only count lifetime jobs since HSR construction isn’t for a lifetime – BIAS!!!
Andrew Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:44 am
Morris, you have long since crossed the line between commenting on the RC’s posts and hijacking his blog with your own posts, craftily camouflaged as comments. This doesn’t apply to all your comments of course, but you’re guilty of it often enough. If you want to hold court, you really should start your own blog, rather than freeloading on RC’s hard-earned audience. Robert is a saint to have let you do this for so long.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 2:52 pm
Don’t cross the line!
There is plenty of data gathered from the ARRA program on how many jobs are created in various categories. In a rail infrastructure category it is less than 3 job-years per $1 million spent.
In addition are created less then 2 additional indirect job-years per million dollars spent.
Now at $43 billion. which was the number they have been trying to convince us the project will cost, the math works out to 129,000 job-years in direct jobs and 86,000 job years in indirect jobs.
Over a 10 year period of construction, if you average out per year, you are talking about 12,900 direct jobs created and 8,600 indirect jobs created by the project. That is a realistic way to look at the jobs being created.
The Central Valley project now proposed as costing $6.4 billion (that’s all the funding currently available and is supposed to be built over 5 years.)
This works out to 19,200 job-yeas direct jobs and 12,800 indirect jobs over the life cycle of this construction of 5 years which on average will be on a per year basis 3840 direct job and 2560 jobs indirect.
The powers in the Central Valley yelling about all the jobs that will be coming their way are going to be very disappointed.
Those are the numbers. Don’t believe me. You look up the numbers.
Why in the world do you think all this talk about the failure of the almost $1 trillion spent on job creation has been a bust?
Peter Baldo Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 6:39 am
GDP is $14 Trillion, and employment is a bit below 140 million, so I suppose that adding 1 job to the economy costs $100 K. In normal times, $100K spent on a train would displace at least some money that would have been spent elsewhere. But with borrowing costs at zero, and construction unemployment high, $1 million spent to pay US workers to make trains should create something like 10 job-years of employment for US workers, scattered around all corners of the economy.
joe Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:06 pm
The multiplier effect would produce more than 10 jobs per million. A heuristic I saw for this economy is 1B spent creates 16,000 jobs.
1 000 000 000 / 16 000 = 62 500 per job.
And it’s a economic waste to let people go unemployed – something that should be but isn’t considered.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:16 pm
Hmmm…if the cost of doing nothing is $100 billion, then not building HSR would generate more than 2x as many jobs. Hmmm….
Alon Levy Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 8:19 am
That goes without saying. Building road infrastructure generates a lot of jobs building railroads does not: pollution control officials, accident insurance workers, doctors, nurses, drug manufacturers, ambulance manufacturers, health care administrators…
Peter Baldo Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:36 pm
Piling more fuzzy math atop my previous fuzzy math:
Unemployment has increased by around 6.5 million since 2006.
Spending on income support and medicaid has increased by around $300 Billion. If $250 Billion of that is spent on the 6.5 million extra unemployed, that’s almost $40 K per additional unemployed person.
Federal tax receipts have gone down by around $400 Billion since 2006. If $300 Billion of that can be attributed to the newly unemployed (and their businesses) paying less taxes, that’s another $40 K loss to the government per unemployed person, bringing the total deficit to about $80 K per newly unemployed person.
A better accounting will move the numbers in one direction or the other. Still, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, in a severe recession, supporting the newly unemployed costs almost as much as putting them to work. Employing American workers doing useful work costs the government next to nothing these days.
I also checked an ARRA report about a rail project near me (Illinois). The amount spent to date has been a bit under $1 Billion. On average (it goes up and down – we have winters here!) there have been 750 job-years. At least in this case, and unless I’m misinterpreting the numbers, 10 job-years per $1 Million spent employing US workers seems about right.
I’d guess that at least half the jobs created by the $6.4 Billion will be created outside of the central valley, so the commenter is in the right ballpark regarding the impact on the central valley.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:40 pm
There are other benefits, specifically here that we get a new railroad out of it with more travel capacity, more speed, greater safety, and will not run on oil.
Our addiction to driving drives our addiction to oil. What we import roughly amounts to what we us for transportation; the great majority of that is motor fuel. The US Department of Energy estimates that has cost us $1.9 trillion between 2004 and 2008 alone, and that doesn’t include things like military actions in Iraq that are at least partially driven by oil.
Ask yourself, would that part of the world be so important, if it weren’t for that black goo? Without it, Osama bin Ladin and his followers would be just crazy people in the desert. Saddam Hussien would be just another tinpot dictator, as would Mommar Quadafi (hope I’m spelling these right). We wouldn’t need to be fighting there; we wouldn’t be tangled up with that (to us) very different culture. Nobody would care about that place–because no one would have to.
Now, HSR is not a cure-all for this, nor is local transit. Truth is, we need a new American way of life. And while intercity rail (which includes HSR) is not a total cure, I see no cure without it.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:41 pm
Link:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/oildep.shtml
Excellent post.
As a comparison, here are the figures released by Vinci, the winner of the bid for construction of the Tours-Bordeaux LGV (340km). Many portions of the line will have to be elevated, including 10 km of viaducts and 415 bridges, because of rivers, marshes, Bordeaux vineyards, and 12 “Natura 2000″ protected wildlife zones.
Total cost: €7.2, half of which paid by state and regions. Any cost overruns will be the consortium’s responsibility. The Vinci consortium is granted a 50-year concession and will collect the tolls from rail operators. After 50 years, RFF will have full ownership of the line.
Construction jobs (figures given by Vinci):
4500 jobs/year, of which 1300 newly created. Duration: 5 years. Total: 22,500 jobs.
RFF gives a higher figure including induced jobs (trucking, hotels, catering, etc…):
60,000 jobs (12,000 jobs/year, x 5years).
Andre Peretti Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 5:15 am
€7.2 billion, not just €7.2!
Andy M. Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 6:13 am
good catch. otherwise I might even have offered tp pay for the work out of my own pocket.
Peter Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 5:23 am
In other words, the US government is not the only one that counts jobs in jobs/year?
Andre Peretti Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 4:40 pm
It’s common practice everywhere but politicians supporting a project sometimes leave out the “/year” part, leaving the impression the jobs will be permanent.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 7:17 am
And still manages to be a lot cheaper than CAHSR. experience, of course, certainly helps in cost reductions.
Andre Peretti Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:51 am
Experience may have a part but the main reason is that, in Europe, the public works sector is highly competitive and it is illegal to favour national or local firms. In the U.S, there is no real competition when public funding is involved, That is no incitement to keep costs low.
Consultants must be neutral and have no links (current or recent) with construction firms, so that they are not tempted to choose needlessly expensive solutions like planning longer viaducts than necessary.
The fixed-cost PPP contracts, which are the rule for French freeways and are now adopted for HSR, mark the end of cost overruns.
Concerning Tours-Bordeaux, Vinci was highly motivated to win the bid. It already operates the Tours-Bordeaux freeway and doesn’t want another company to compete with it on rails. So, whether you drive or take the train, Vinci will take the money.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:03 pm
So they might have even taken this contract at a loss then, if the alternative was even greater losses from loss of revenue.
Andre Peretti Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 3:20 pm
I recently watched an interview of a Vinci executive. He said that, as far as France was concerned, all all the freeways that needed to be built had been built and the next challenge for the firm was HSR. He added the firm intented to bid on all future HSR projects.
Vinci is now world #1 construction firm. That would prove they know what they are doing.
Jon Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 1:09 pm
May I just say that it’s nice to have someone from a true HSR nation commenting on this blog? A refreshing change from some of the US/California-centric commentators.
How teabaggers can claim infrastructure projects at home are not affordable, but a 10 year occupation in Afghanistan (that could pay for the entire project in one year) is affordable blows my mind. Oh yeah, no it doesn’t: the tea party and their defense contractor friends benefit from the war, while the train would be an annoyance as it would take away from money-making defense pork.
VBobier Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:46 am
For Defense, It’s more like Super Pork, agreed no matter what.
Ok, I get your argument. We got some money, lets infuse the construction industry with money, which trust me, I am around that industry a lot and 50% of everything floats to the top (meaning you will have some executive getting some new toys). We can go like gangbusters and let Peter Kewit and Sons go to town on this thing. Hopefully they pick up a few of our local contractors. However, how can you resist not buying brand new equipment and construction toys for your crews because basically you are one only a few companies large enough to bid on a project this big and can slip this into your bid. Construction will roll into town, make our local economies explode and people will be back to enjoying buying cars all the time, new homes and toys like boats and off road vehicles. Construction will go on for approximately 5 years and then one day we all get up in the morning and walk outside: Everyone is gone, there are two shinny rails on the ground and CRASH!!!!! Gee, does that sound like what happened from 2000 to 2005, who was one of the bandits that made out in that craze….CONSTRUCTION. Maybe the levels we are seeing or I agree a little more would help is the natural balance of life and progression. Maybe what I call the “Greed Bubble” of the early 2000′s led by banks, real estate and construction should serve as the same comparison as to what this whole “Jobs” argument is all about. People have forgotten the objective and made HSR about Jobs, not rail and is it going to be effective and efficient.
Remember, construction is not the only job market there is out there. There is education, medical, law enforcement…..trying to artificially inflate one sector is asking for trouble. Trying to artificially inflate one sector by masking it behind a poorly executed project is just POLITICS AS USUAL.
Peter Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 2:18 pm
Or we can do absolutely nothing, sit on our hands, produce absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever, and people will continue to be out of work. Sounds good to me.
afukuda77 Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 2:42 pm
The alternative that everyone overlooks is investing in other regional and state-wide projects that do the same and if not more improvements for less cost. Examples, improving Caltrain, improving LOSSAN (not sure of name), creating a train corridor over the Grapevine for Amtrak, improving Amtrak (investments in scheduling and improved service), Baby-Bullet (c’mmon, everyone loves a baby). This should also be coupled with major investment in local and regional transit projects that helps locals move in a better fashion. Right now all you get is the slim potential that you will move a limited market of people amongst only large population centers.
Some of these are “shovel ready” much more so than HSR. Actually CHSRA is no where near shovel ready and if the public thinks the process has been handled poorly so far, wait until they get their hands on the construction money. All this money is going to flow uphill and then disappear.
So basically it is put your money in CHSRA and it does get wasted because this project is poorly executed, and could be decades before we get any improvements in transportation. Or we improve what we have and get benefits sooner. Your choice.
Peter Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 5:34 pm
“Right now all you get is the slim potential that you will move a limited market of people amongst only large population centers.”
Slim potential? How’s that? Based on what?
“All this money is going to flow uphill and then disappear.”
What are you talking about?
afukuda77 Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:49 pm
Stations are limited to 24 through the state. It completely bypasses the coastal cities, many central valley cities and it really access only SF, SJ, Fresno, Bako, and LA (maybe a few others).
Uphill means exactly what is happening right now. Money going to some of the larges consulting firms in the US. PB, URS, AECOM, HNTB…..No local firms hired. And, as that money gets pushed into these consulting firms the owners (board and investors) keep getting richer and stronger. No local survey firms were used, no local engineers were used, essentially there is nothing local about this project.
JRider Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 6:51 pm
No local firms hired?
AECOM is based out of Los Angeles and URS is based out of San Francisco…
D. P. Lubic Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Afukuda 77, I’ve been following this game for a very long time, ever since the first oil embargo in 1973. The vulnerability of this nation to oil problems, the wars we currently fight that are at least partially about oil, and the high price you are stuck paying for gasoline (partially because you may not even have a bus line near your house), are all at least partially due to our delays in providing other transportation options, chief among them reviving rail service. I won’t claim it as a cure-all because it isn’t, but it is also an important part of the cure, indeed without it there is no cure.
Do we need HSR? Yes. Do we need improvements in secondary services you say we do? Yes!
And do we need schools and hospitals? You know that answer!
We need it all, and it now costs so much because we’ve been fooling around for years making meaningless boasts about how “We’re No. 1!” instead of dealing with the problems when we should have.
afukuda77 Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:44 pm
DP Could not agree more. Which leads me to believe that we need to get to investing in taking our current systems to more efficient modes, move our local and regional transportation to mass transit and look at those projects that are achievable. The HSR as proposed has major problems in its execution and runs a high risk of not achieving obtainable objectives for several decades. It was a shame that the CHSRA did not only look at HSR and the no alternative, but also looked at other beneficial technology or projects.
This narrow approach and the insistence of the CHSRA to ignore the public will not bode well for the State.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:01 pm
It was and is outside of the scope of their mandate to examine bus service in Fumbuck.
YesonHSR Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 1:47 am
And what does Boswell grow that you can put on your table and eat Arron ?? of course minus their prop 13 land welfare and crop money
Joey Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 12:55 am
Amtrak is mostly a lost cause due to inescapable FRA and freight compatibility requirements in most places.
As for focusing on local and regional transportation first, it’s an interesting thought. It would certainly get a lot more cars off the road and probably offer a greater benefit to more people, though in the long term we need local, regional, and intercity transportation.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 6:03 am
It may seem silly, Afukuda, but all of us are right. We do need the local public transit option you advocate for..There have been some serious fights on that, too; wasn’t a subway in Los Angeles actually outlawed at the Federal level for a while?. If you don’t believe me, do an internet search on “anti-light rail” or “anti rail,” and you will find exactly the same arguments against local transit that you are hearing against HSR. This is despite the fact that the road system is a huge financial black hole with a pitiful 51% cost recovery–and even that ratio may be overstated!
And we need intercity rail, too, and that includes the high-speed stuff (unless you want us to live forever with train service that is at best not as good as what was around in 1960, much less what was around in 1950).
CAHSRA’s focus on the high-speed line? That’s its job; to consider the system approach you advocate would properly be the role of Caltran and the government as a whole. However, I can tell you that if you ever took that approach, all you would get would be more roads. State “departments of tar” are like that. I know, I’ve dealt with that myself.
It doesn’t help matters that politicians (who as a group hold final responsibility in regard to government operations) tend to be a combination of the most cowardly and stupid people around. I find it amazing–as noted elsewhere–that most–the great majority–seem either unaware or unwilling to talk about peak oil and the need for a new way of living. I guess they’re afraid they’d be out of work if they did speak out–and elected officials are prohibited from collecting unemployment benefits, at least here where I live in West Virginia.
afukuda77 Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 11:09 am
Hi DP
I look at Highway 99 and realize that what we need is regional benefits. We need to move people within this corridor efficiently. I completely realize the CHSRA’s objectives and goal, that was a mistake by special interests and legislators back in 2005 to not give us enough flexibility within Prop 1A to do transportation projects of high speed nature, but maybe not 220 mph high speed. I just recently participated in a conference webinar that reviewed a concept called Baby-Bullet (cute idea huh). But it is a well thought out plan and a very sexy one at that. It takes the median through the Valley along Highway 99, Which is in terrible condition and converts it into a 125-134 mph (I cannot remember the speeds) rail corridor. I also think there was some improvements to the UPRR to help them encourage goods movement along rail instead of road. I think the cost per mile was significantly less and did not impact any other services.
Of course he also conditioned his presentation that local transportation needed to get people out of cars an on to local transit, completely agree! You cannot force someone out of a car, but you can entice them with cheap and accessible transportation.
HSR as planned is expensive (and when I say expensive I mean for a family in the valley with an average of 4 people they probably are not going to use it as a typical mode to other areas given they have a car and it will probably be cheaper and more convenient once they get to their destination) and not accessible by everyone. So it starts at a severe disadvantage.
Peter Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 11:33 am
The main reason why the Authority can’t consider lower speeds in the CV is that the final version of AB3034 requires the 2:40 SF-LA time. If I recall correctly, the prior version had 2:44 as the maximum time. Those four minutes would have given them a lot of leeway to slow the trains down, especially through urban areas.
The Baby-Bullet idea sounds good to me, but also would appear to be unnecessary. There already is local train service in the CV with the Amtrak San Joaquin. If you wanted to improve service in the CV, then upgrading the already-existing BNSF alignment by straightening some curves and electrifying the route would be a much cheaper way to achieve nearly the same benefits.
I think you’re underestimating the value for families of using HSR. Experience in other countries has shown us that many families use HSR for long-distance travel. Some Japanese trains even have children’s playrooms. LA, SD, SF, and even SJ will have extensive public transit services available. Even Fresno has ambitious plans in place for Bus Rapid Transit and a street car line. I’m not sure what plans Bakersfield has.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Most people travel alone. The lack of public transit doesn’t stop people from using airports. The family of four will find regional low speed fares just as onerous as fares on high speed services. In other words it’s a a variant of FUD.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Actually, the lack of public transit to airports does affect use, slightly. KTX ridership inched down when Seoul opened a new subway line to Gimpo.
Of course, the main elephant in the room is not the air/rail mode share, but rather the highway/rail mode share. The air/rail mode share depends almost exclusively on HSR travel time. The highway/rail mode share varies wildly.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
The “there’s-no-mass-transit” argument is No. 24 on the FUD top 40. Moot since Real Americans don’t us the subway in Seoul or anyplace else. Not that even with fast frequent mass transit Real Americans would ride HSR.
People get to and from airports, they’ll use the same skills to get to and from train stations. For many of the passengers, existing mass transit options are going to be much better for HSR compared to airports.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 6:54 pm
Dude, you realize I’ve only ever been to Real America three times in my life, and that’s only if you count Athens, GA, and Las Vegas, right?
People get to and from airports, but they sometimes say screw it and drive instead. The breakeven point in the US for driving vs. flying is around a thousand kilometers, if I remember correctly. When there is decent connecting transportation (not just transit, but also quick driving to the city) and the flights are direct, it’s much higher. Tokyo-Fukuoka is about a thousand kilometers and nearly everyone flies.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 11:15 pm
Las Vegas is one of the most unreal places on the planet, the parts tourists and conventioneers see anyway. Real Americans go to Branson, which is Las Vegas without the gambling, drugs, hooker, restaurants etc.
Just for my amusement I checked San Diego to Sacramento on Expedia for a Tues-Thurs trip. Apparentl there are no non-stops. The shortest flight is 2:35. When HSR is completed to Sacramento it will take 3:35. No contest, I’d take the train. San Francisco has non-stops and the train takes longer to get to San Francisco. I’d think about it because flying is a PITA.
Sometimes they they say screw driving and take the train instead. Unless you want to pay the outrageous fare between Albany and National Airport the fastest way to get between here and Washington DC is to drive. Google estimates it at 7:20. Google is overly optimistic. The train on the other hand only takes 7:40 and that includes the padding between Albany and Schenectady. Shop early and the cost is competitive with driving. ( Twice as much as my gas would be then there’s tolls, parking if I don’t want to engage in figuring out DC parking regs etc. ) And I don’t have to drive for 8 or 9 hours. I take the train. ..it’s only 650 kilometers. Manhattan, I take the train. Rockland County, I drive. Boston or Montreal, I drive because there’s no other reasonable way to get to there….
dan Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 10:02 am
Adirondacker, there are 10 (ten) round trip flights from San Diego to Sacramento daily on southwest. They’re often mostly full.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 10:29 am
…Expedia… apparently…
Peter Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 10:45 am
Yeah, Southwest does not list its flights other than on its own website.
Elizabeth Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 10:38 am
This is true for shorter trips but not for longer trips. The vast majority of car trips have several people in the car.
StevieB Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 10:52 am
What percentage of longer trips are you representing as a vast majority? What is your definition of a longer as opposed to a shorter trip? What studies are you using as reference? It would seem that the longer the trip the less likely it would be to find another person who needs to travel to the same location by car.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 11:07 am
You have a cite for that?
Alon Levy Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 12:46 pm
If you’re willing to believe Mikhail Chester on the matter, the average for intercity travel in California is 2. It’s probably too difficult to sneak a unit conversion error into that figure, though you never know.
Elizabeth Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
PB uses 2.5 people per HSR trip. I think only 17% of the auto passengers surveyed were solo drivers. The number for all trips > 100 miles is over 2. Conditional on non-business car use, the number is well over 2, probably closer to 3. I was surprised to see these numbers so I actually kept track on my last trip on the 5. A large majority of the cars had groups in the.
datacruncher Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 3:09 pm
One of the problems is CalTrans has been converting the 99 median into traffic lanes. I’d be curious if the webinar addressed that issue.
In many areas the median is gone, replaced with traffic lanes and center barriers without space for more lanes or rail. Either a new ROW would be needed alongside 99 or the existing ROW widened which would mean not only impacts on residents in the corridor along with the cost of rebuilding the existing overpasses and freeway traffic lanes to make room.
For example, thru much of Fresno County the median has been used to make the freeway 6 lanes without replacing existing overpasses.
CalTrans has started construction to do the same between Kingsburg and Goshen (thru northern Tulare County) and also going north of Fresno toward Madera. Additionally the state is going to bid next year to continue replacing the 99 median with new traffic lanes from Goshen south to just before Tulare.
Seems like the 99 median for rail may have made sense 10 or 20 years ago when the median was untouched. But CalTrans has probably made that a much more expensive and complicated idea since it started widening 99 using the median.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 8:08 pm
Freeway medians are non-starters. This is just Amtrak-y foamers looking at maps while hallucinating that ROW acquisition is even a second-order driver of cost in the Central Valley.
Everywhere that HS lines follow highways they do so to the side, where the engineering costs of traversing every single highway interchange are still dominant (but less insane than in a median). Moreover they tend to follow the highway alignments for environmental mitigation reasons, not agribusiness avoidance or ROW cost reasons.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 8:15 am
The only reasonable train corridor over the Grapevine is one for HSR. And if you’re building HSR, the time difference between the Grapevine and the currently chosen route, while significant, is not enormous, and it’s okay to build either, depending on what’s cheaper.
synonymouse Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 11:48 am
I don’t see why you couldn’t run freight over Tejon.
Peter Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 11:51 am
For the exact same reason why HSR shouldn’t use freight tracks: U.S. freight trains beat the shit out of the tracks. Also, the long tunnels would have to be built to higher specs to allow for diesels operations – which would cost even more money.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
No reason why freight can’t be hauled with electric locomotives. Freight unlike passenger traffic isn’[t as time sensitive.
Clem Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 12:22 pm
3.5% grades would require double the motive power ($$$) probably to the point of economic unfeasibility.
BTW look for some bombshell budget numbers to come out regarding Tejon.
Peter Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 12:36 pm
“BTW look for some bombshell budget numbers to come out regarding Tejon.”
Have you heard something, or do you just feel it in your water?
I just ask because your water seems to be quite reliable for this kind of stuff.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Good bombshell, bad bombshell, and what timeline?
Peter Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 2:02 pm
I was just checking on this, and it appears that the study that staff was supposed to prepare on the issue was due out in September. They’re probably holding onto the study until the next Board meeting.
synonymouse Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 8:51 pm
I was thinking in terms of lighter, more time-sensitive freight and as a backup to the Loop line. I am probably the only one on the planet who sees Tejon relatively less likely to be put out of service than Tehachapi. Trucks don’t seem to have such a big problem with gradients, but then that plus a number of other tricks, are the reason trucks have always been the biggest stone in the rr’s shoe.
If it is bombshell bad for Tejon it would not time for PB to uncork the champagne bottles. Clearly there must be some flinty issues with Tehachapi otherwise they would not have opened up the crypt to which the phantom menace of Tejon had been consigned. Tehachapi is many miles longer to construct, operate and maintain – not a happy prospect even for stone Palmdale boosters.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 9:30 pm
Trucks are better on grades for the same reason cars are–rubber tires. Of course, that also limits their performance in other ways, most notably in higher energy consumption per ton-mile. Their big advantages over rail are a combination of flexibility in scheduling and pickup/dropoff locations (almost as flexible as a car), and the big subsidies given to highways (noted elsewhere).
As in the case of automobile traffic, it would be interesting to see what would happen in the trucking field if the highway subsidy was ended, or if even just the Federal share of highway spending went away. I wonder how much of the high-value freight that goes by truck now would go to rail, and specifically how much would go to whatever the freight service on HSR would be.
I imagine HSR freight would largely be package service, along the lines of UPS and Fed-Ex (I understand the latter is actually the corporate successor to Railway Express, and its employees are covered by Railroad Retirement instead of Social Security because of this). It might be the best way to operate this type of service would be with some sort of containterization, but not necessarily the same containers being used in intermodal service now. Instead, it might involve smaller containers, possibly along the lines of what the airlines use. Alternately, it might be with something like a standard container, but one that would go inside a car, or a car with retractable sides, the idea being to maintain the aerodynamic shape you need for HSR speeds.
Max Wyss Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 3:07 am
Another reason for trucks to be better on grades is that they have a higher specific power (kw/t). This is necessary to overcome the higher rolling resistance of rubber on asphalt/concrete compared to steel on steel. And it is also necessary to achieve higher acellerations at low speeds; imagine a truck acellerating like a heavy freight train from a signal…
To the discussion: 2.5% grades are steep for “classic” freight, but for high speed (passenger) trains, it is not so. For example, if crossing rolling hills territory, the grades are short. Taking into account the momentum the train has, it won’t slow down that much if it has a sufficiently high speed entering the grade. So, it is reasonable to design a dedicated high speed line with grades up to 3.5% (maybe even more for short stretches).
To the Swiss Gotthard pass example. It is indeed true that the couplers limit the load (without helpers) to about 1400 metric tonnes on the 2.6% grades (you can get another 400 to 600 tonnes with helpers), although an additional limiting factor are the curves with only 300 m radius. Nevertheless, the average freight trains are hauled at 70 to 80 km/h up the grades (passenger trains run at that speed as well because of the curves). Now where helpers become very useful is going downhill… there are no further limits on the braking force if the engine is at the rear of the train, which means that it can be controlled using regenerative braking only, and at more or less the same speed as climbing the grade.
As D.P. Lubic states, freight on HSR would mainly be very fast freight, meaning parcels. You could imagine essentially the same train platform as for passengers, but made up for “transportation boxes” (aka containers). In fact, that exists in France, where La Poste has three TGV sets just for that purpose, and they are used to ship parcels and mail between Paris and the south (greater Marseille area).
Peter Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 10:04 am
“So, it is reasonable to design a dedicated high speed line with grades up to 3.5% (maybe even more for short stretches).”
Germany has Neubaustrecken for the ICE 3 that have 4% grades.
DesertXpress is designed with 4.5% grades. I’m curious how fast trains will be running up and down those grades…
synonymouse Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 11:01 am
Still the question of freight over Tejon is irrelevant if the engineers come back saying it will cost more to breach Tejon than to put a man on Mars.
Tehachapi is mediocre at best and you have spent all that money paralleling a very congested freight line and have done nothing to reduce the bottleneck. The Tehachapi hsr alignment will likely be underutilized. Not an encouraging prospect.
Peter Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 11:18 am
Isn’t UP working on adding capacity over Tehachapi?
And why should a public project run be a public agency charged with developing high speed passenger rail service, the CHSRA, care about reducing the bottleneck on a rail line owned by a private company that is notoriously opposed to accomodating passenger rail in general, and high speed rail in particular? Who cares?
Max Wyss Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 11:32 am
To Peter: I think the maximum speed in Germany is 300 km/h (that’s what the Neubaustrecke between Frankfurt Flughafen and Köln is designed for). And in France, it used to be that the train entered the grade at 270 km/h (now 300 km/h) and leaving it after gaining 150 m of altitude at about 220 to 240 km/h, rolling down the next grade and gaining back to 300 km/h.
Keep in mind that the grades in France and Germany are short (gaining maybe 150 m of altitude or so), which means that braking performance is not such an issue (in fact, simply braking is more demanding than keeping the speed on a short steep grade.
A (maybe interesting) example of how relevant the speed is for the steepness of the grade: the German ICE 1 trainsets are not allowed to climb the Geislinger Steige (a few kilometers at 2.8% or so with some rather sharp curves) if one power unit is off line.
Peter Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 11:38 am
@ Max
Yes, braking performance on the downhill is in fact more important than maintaining speed going uphill.
Wouldn’t the ICE 1 and 2 trainsets be limited in terms of the grades they are allowed to climb with only one powerhead in comparison to the ICE 3 simply because the ICE 3 is an EMU?
How do the ICE 2 trainsets perform that have the one powerhead converted into a cab car? Are they as limited as the ICE 1 trainsets?
Max Wyss Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 12:10 pm
To Peter:
It is only the ICE1 sets which are limited. The reason is that apparently one single power unit does not have sufficient tractive force to get the fully loaded train reliably moving after a signal stop (which do indeed occur on that stretch, because of the dense traffic). I am not aware of such a limitation with an ICE 2 double unit, because it is a bit lighter with a slightly more powerful and modern power unit. BTW note that the ICE 2 (consisting of 7 cars) is essentially half an ICE 1 (consisting of 14 cars maximum), where one car (not the power car) has been turned into a cab car. Normally, two ICE 2 sets run in double, but it allows to split to reach two destinations.
The distributed power equipped ICE 3 trains have a higher initial tractive force by design, and I think the 7-car set has 2 independent power trains, which means that a double unit has still 75% of tractive force when one power train has to be deactivated.
Clem Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 3:53 pm
Bombshell is good for Tejon.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Good as in “Can probably be done for not much more than Tehachapi,” or as in “can definitely be done and extended to an IOS on the money that Obama wanted”?
adirondacker12800 Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 5:24 pm
Depends on your point of view. Good could be “so expensive that it makes Palmdale look cheap, preserving the natural beauty of the area”
synonymouse Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 8:39 pm
All systems go for Tejon would be very good news indeed for the CHSRA, as a faster, shorter line at an acceptable price enhances the viability of the hsr concept.
I certainly hope this PB “Spring” extends to revisiting both Altamont and I-5. If you really want improved passenger rail in California you have to zoom in on cost-benefit plus public acceptance. I-5 avoids most all contentious issues I can conceive and Altamont is the default entree to the Bay Area.
Fiscal caution has clearly moved to the top of priorities internationally. I’ll leave it up to the historians and economists why this is happening but austerity is a done deal at least for the immediate future. So the CHSRA will have to budget very carefully.
If the left returns to power it will still have to cope with all the attention that has been focused on infrastructure spending. There is now a realism now about the number of jobs created. Not so many. So you will have to sell these really expensive projects based on objective need.
For sure the Bay Bridge drama has produced much skepticism. How much can we afford to spend on something we don’t or won’t produce domestically?
Peter Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 8:18 am
Altamont, maybe, but no chance of I-5.
Altamont may be reopened if Altamont turned out to be significantly cheaper, or Pacheco significantly more expensive than previously estimated.
I-5 is not going to be selected because it doesn’t serve the Central Valley in any way, shape, or form, at a high cost in ridership. And constructing an upgraded San Joaquins service to somehow feed HSR would likely wipe out the any cost savings achieved by using I-5.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 11:04 am
Correct!
+1!
AOL!
Like!
synonymouse Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 11:07 am
I am suggesting a scenario that would be very positive for California passenger rail. It could be that for roughly the same price we could have both I-5 and 110mph San Joaquins as for neo-99 eminent domain Stilt-A-Rail. Win-win in that the deepest pockets market(SF to LA)would be more competitive with the I-5 express route and the 99 corridor would be getting very decent service with little disruption. The UP trackage along 99 will have to be upgraded anyway.
Seems to me the Tejon tunnels represent some very high profile contracts. There ought to be at least several serious competitors. Since the mountain crossing is the most expensive segment every effort should be made to put this out to bid first to take advantage of whatever recessionary construction bargains there might be.
HSTSheldon Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 6:53 pm
5,000 ton plus freight trains most definitely do not like any kind of grade over 1%. Look at the lengths the CPR, the UP, The Rio Grande et al went including the Kicking Horse Spiral Tunnels etc. to get the grades down to manageable levels. Even in electrified Switzerland, they have a hard time with the existing 3% Gotthard grades using much shorter trains albeit with the crappy buffer and chain couplings. You will not design a new line which carries a lot of freight with a 3.5% gradient. The operators would have your head under the guillotine for that.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 9:59 pm
In some places a 5,000-ton freight train is relatively light. The Duluth, Messabe & Iron Range ran 18,000-ton iron ore trains clear back in the 1940s and 1950s with very large and heavy steam engines. Similar monster coal trains are quite common in the east today. As far as I know, none of these very heavy trains operates on grades much in excess of 2%, and even then that is a difficult operation.
The Western Maryland Railway used to run 100-car coal trains up the 3% grades of the now-abandoned Blackwater Canyon line between Elkins and Thomas, W.Va. Such a train would have a gross tonnage on the order of 8,500 tons (50-ton hopper cars, small by modern standards), not including the locomotives. That operation required ten locomotives to wrestle that train up the Blackwater Canyon’s 3% grades and around curves sharp enough to limit maximum car length on the line to 70 feet (for comparison, a modern auto rack car is 89 feet long). It was a spectacular operation in steam, and the diesels were only slightly less so–and it still required 10 diesel units on the same 100 cars.
The expenses of running that railroad into the sky are why the line is no longer in service.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 7:17 am
I still wish the trains were there, though:
http://www.wvbike.org/bct/history.html
As it used to be:
http://www.railsandtrails.com/WM/WMStory1952/WMStory1952-p00-TitleLeft-150lgu.jpg
I miss my trains:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/BlackwaterCanyon.jpg/800px-BlackwaterCanyon.jpg
D. P. Lubic Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 7:37 am
Although the Blackwater Canyon line would die, other parts would survive, some still in use for current successor CSX, and some as heritage roads recalling the lovely “Wild Mary.”
West Virginia Central (with a visiting Shay steam engine from Cass Scenic Railroad of WM heritage):
http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?location=West%20Virginia%20Central%20Railroad
Western Maryland Scenic Railway, Cumberland-Frostburg:
http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?railroad=Western%20Maryland%20Scenic%20Railroad
That gear-drive Shay that was a guest on the West Virginia Central is normally at the Cass Scenic Railroad, billed as “the longest state park in West Virginia.” It’s a former logging road with grades up to 11%.
http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?railroad=Cass%20Scenic%20Railroad
All this is wonderful, enough to make me want more . . .
YesonHSR Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 1:38 am
The alternative ArronMadrea is that it does run by your house.. you like a well-trained NIMBY from Palo Alto .. has so many issues about high-speed rail… but never mentions a serious little fact that it’s going to run by your house and that’s why you spend all your time and effort to stop it.. spare us a little with your concern effort..reveal how you’re trying to stop high-speed with all of your lies and aligning yourself with the sleazy Teabaggers..
Would the initial construction segment include a track maintenance facility in Kern County? Where would it be located, a proposed HVMF site? How many permanent jobs will it create?
Peter Reply:
September 23rd, 2011 at 5:35 pm
They haven’t made any decisions on locating any type of maintenance facilities yet.
Off topic, but some interesting numbers and comments from the Infrastructurist site.
First, we have some information provided by a commenter who goes by the name of Montag:
1960 average price for gas 31 cents/gallon ($2.23 in 2010 dollars)
1960 median household income $5,700 ($41,074.27 in 2010 dollars)
1960 average vehicles per household 1.03
1960 average VMT per household 9,805 miles at 14.4 mpg
9,805/14.4 = 680.9 gallons of gas per household on an annual basis.
680.9 gal/year x .31 gal = $210/year
$210/$5,700 = 3.68% of household income
2011 average price for a gallon of gas $3.50/gallon
2010 median household income $49,445
2009 average vehicles per household 1.92
2009 average VMT per household 19,900 miles at 23.1 mpg
19,900/23.1= 861.5 gallons of gas per household on an annual basis.
860.5 gal/year x $3.50/gal = $3,015/year
$3,015/$49,445 = 6.1% of household income
A reply by me (actually two, modified and combined for some clarity):
What we are seeing here, at least as I interpret it, is a combination of the cost of sprawling suburban living (that big increase in miles driven, ownership of many second vehicles), the increase in the cost of petroleum products, and also the effects of stagnating real wages (something that has been on the minds of some economists of late) relative to the increasing costs of other things (food, housing, insurance, and of course gasoline).
Note that the cost of gasoline relative to the household’s income almost doubles, even as fuel consumption per mile drops well towards half. The result is an increase in overall cost despite a falling unit cost, arguably with no increase in value (you still buy the same groceries, but you have to go further to get them). Put it all together and throw in a lot of people out of work, and you have people, families, and a country in distress.
And, I might mention, consider that this is not just the gasoline; it’s also the repairs and insurance and car payment on a second vehicle. Add that up and throw in the stagnant wage issue, and suburbia, as “dreamed” about, becomes just a dream for very many people.
The whole suburban sprawl system–not just the gas–is becoming unaffordable, unless you either got into it years ago and your house is paid for, or unless you can make bigger bucks than most, or unless you are in a place where houses are really cheap for one reason or another.
An item for reference (and I’ll have to give it more than a skim myself when I get the time):
http://www.policyarchive.org/handle/10207/bitstreams/1529.pdf
An interesting coincidence–I can’t find the study or article just yet, but I seem to recall an economist who noted that when oil purchases grew to exceed 4% of GNP, they would have the effect of an oil price shock and induce a recession. If Montag’s numbers are right, combined with other things (i.e., a lack of customers for business), then a general household cost in the 6% range puts a lot of people in recession territory.
I did some looking:
Not quite what I remembered, and certainly not where I saw it, but a documented oil price trigger level–5.5% of GNP–as a recession inducer:
http://www.transitiontowns.org.nz/node/3047
A following comment by another poster named Dean, in conversation directed to Montag:
Blast! You caught me forgetting that the number of cars per household is different than 50 years ago, making a significant difference in the percentage fuel cost per of household budgets. If I had not forgotten that, and on a per car basis, my point would have been close enough. Do you have the numbers and years for when fuels costs were the largest and smallest part of the household budget?
We have had relatively cheap gas for a long time. If we could get the speculators out of oil futures, we would have better stability. Even if we still have plenty of oil in the ground, as some on this site have claimed, the demand for oil seems to be growing much faster than we can currently put more wells on line. The price is going to go up in comparison to everything else at some point. Hopefully, the price will only rise fast enough to drive us to alternatives and not so fast to put us into shock.
Montag replying to Dean:
I haven’t looked for the period of time when household fuel expenditures were the lowest, but I expect it ran from the 1950s, up until the early 1970s, when the first oil shocks occurred and the economics of middle class households began to shift away from a single-income model to a dual-income model with the entry of large numbers of women into the workforce.
Presently the dual income model, which became the de facto norm starting in the 1980s, only provides 20% more household income, adjusted for inflation, than the single-income economic model of the 1950s and 60s. It also imposes substantial additional economic costs, such as transportation, mentioned above, and preschool/daycare for those with children. This is what Elizabeth Warren refers to as the two income trap. Combine these additional costs, with the cost of housing, healthcare, and taxes, which, as a percentage of income, are dramatically higher than they were in 1960 for the middle and working classes, and you begin to understand why a jump in the price of gas suddenly becomes the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Me again:
Talk about a triple-whammy! Our wages stagnate in real terms while everything else goes up, a second person working adds only 20% more to income while incurring double the additional associated costs, and those additional costs are also rising, with a key or visible component–gasoline–being the “last straw.” This is worse than I thought; wish I could come up with an answer. . .and the bad part is, the leadership we have, even that which would be at least nominally sympathetic to the working people, is apparently not aware of these ratios, or at least is uncomfortable talking about them, and for that matter about the peak oil question. . .
How did my country, which won WW II, which lead the world so long, which was that “shining city on the hill,” turn so dumb and wimpy?
Dean again:
It looks like we forgot how to count. Or how to take into account the effects of an action.
Comments edited to cut out extraneous quotes from previous posters in replies. Full Infrastructurist page on this subject is visible below:
http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/09/19/is-the-world-running-out-of-oil/#comments
neville snark Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 11:55 am
Very informative – thanks.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
You could change your user name to “D. P. Lubic Off Topic” and save yourself some repeated typing!
D. P. Lubic Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 10:10 pm
Well, it looks like I have achieved high status here–a jab from Richard. Thanks!
Re: “All of us here in this room are taxpayers,” said Hanford resident Paul Rohrbough. “And I’m here to say that we can’t afford this project. Financial common sense must be the rule.”
and “Teabaggers complain about the debt causing long-term problems for the country.” (from Robert)
Most people (Democrats and especially Republicans, regular folk and especially politicians) are really only concerned about the short-term economic picture. They want jobs now and they want the economy to get better now. They are pro environment until they realize that we might have to suffer now. And most HSR opponents I have spoken to don’t understand that the $40B+ price tag is not something that we spend now, but that it is spent over the course of decades. So for all these people that truly only give a crap about now to say that they are against HSR spending is ridiculous.
More rail service could spring from new agency
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/sep/23/sandag-backs-plan-single-agency-manage-southern-ca/
“A plan is in the works that could lead to a significant expansion of rail service between San Diego and Los Angeles.
Regional transportation agencies are considering joining forces for a super authority that would oversee 351 miles of coastal rail between San Diego and San Luis Obisbo.
Among the many changes forged by that authority could be as many as 27 additional daily train trips along the San Diego-Los Angeles corridor, officials said…”
Peter Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 7:24 am
That’s not a bad idea. If well-implemented and combined with some smart upgrades to the corridor, there may be no need to construct HSR for LA-SD.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 8:44 am
38 trains per day, LA-San Diego? That would be amazing, although I suspect it would require doing all the double tracking and tunneling. Still, improving LA-San Diego is cheap enough that you could get a large portion of it done via private investment.
political_incorrectness Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 3:52 pm
Definitely a good idea, especially if this means improvements to the current Surfliner service between Santa Barbara and San Diego. I am not sure about having all Coaster trains going to Los Angeles and Metrolink trains to San Diego. Better coordination of schedules to permit connections perhaps or have them used for local service and make Amtrak express service?
JJJ Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
Right, people dont give a crap what the logo on the train says. They just want to get from A to B. Let them stroll up to a kiosk, and let them see next departures (regardless of agency) and people will love it.
Reminds me of when I was in Italy. I wanted Verona->Venice. Dozens of options, ranging from 10 euro to 100 euro, depending on number of stops etc.
RisenMessiah Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 10:46 am
Knock, knock, here comes the MTC part deux….
This is a very interesting article (and following comment) on the TGV from the Transport Politic:
http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2011/09/24/after-30-years-tgv-service-prospers-even-as-its-future-is-questioned/
Andre Peretti Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 8:00 pm
A very interesting and well documented article based on real data, not the sort of low-level made-up stuff Mr Morris likes to quote.
The TGV’s problem is clearly exposed: the government wants it to offer affordable fares while obliging it to pay for its construction costs and subsidize slower unprofitable trains. As RFF wants to keep its AAA rating, it increases the tolls every year to pay off the loans.
As Yonah Freemark states, privatizing the tracks, as will be the case for Tours-Paris, will not solve the problem for the TGV. It may even be worse because private companies have shareholders expecting dividends and will charge even higher tolls.
A detail he didn’t mention: the companies like Vinci and Bouygues competing to build and operate HSR also build and operate freeways. I doubt they will be very keen on getting people out of their cars. The risk is they will rather try to attract businessmen and wealthy tourists, and the TGV will no longer be a train for all. Ordinary people will drive or take buses, or fly cattle class on Ryanair.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 8:28 pm
The advantage of involving private capital in operating profitability is, as you yourself say above is
One might imagine that in a rigorously functioning democracy that public sector actors might have a degree of risk exposure (public shaming, loss of employment or responsibility, un-election) that might have some effect on taming the private-sector rent-seeking and “strategic misrepresentation” that leads to massive cost overruns and ridership shortfalls.
Sadly this doesn’t seem to be the case. Enormous political and public service failures are simply shrugged off. “Mistakes were made.”
The only corrective apparent here in the times of Late Capitalism is to add in risk exposure to failure in the form of capital exposure of private sector actors.
Some might argue that the cure is worse than the disease. Some might argue that the public’s representatives agree to (ie are duped into or bribed to) contracts that are too favourable to the private party. But, as much as I would like to believe otherwise and would like to live in a better world, I don’t think anybody can argue that the Californian system of no accountability and no risk exposure by any party can result in anything but systematic large-scale fraud.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 9:14 pm
“But, as much as I would like to believe otherwise and would like to live in a better world, I don’t think anybody can argue that the Californian system of no accountability and no risk exposure by any party can result in anything but systematic large-scale fraud.”–Richard Mlynarik
Systemic large-scale fraud? That sounds an awful lot like what has been going on at Wall Street in recent years, including rip-offs in California (re: Enron).
joe Reply:
September 24th, 2011 at 9:44 pm
What a Drama Mamma.
Andre Peretti Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 6:01 am
One thing still puzzles me: why are big firms competing for Tours-Bordeaux while none seem to be interested in LA-SF where potential ridership is at least 10 times higher?
I think one reason is how differently HSR is viewed in France and the US.
In France, it rouses no passion. It’s just a means of transportation competing with others. No one expects it to solve unemployment problems. It’s a political non-issue. Anti-privatization attempts by the far left have fallen flat. People just don’t care who builds and runs it.
In the US, it’s part of the left/right divide. It’s even verging on the religious. You have HSR missionaries promising heavenly bliss and anti-HSR ayatollahs threatening ultimate doom.
Who expects private capital to join in a war of religions?
As a down-to-earth European, I think HSR should only be a mobility solution to a mobility problem. That’s what it is in countries where it works.
If its main purpose is to create as many jobs as possible and give work to local firms, then its scope goes far beyond that of a transportation project, and so will its budget.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 7:08 am
I can confirm that my country is stupid about the “passion” that Andre mentions. I will mention that the opposition is largely generational in nature, and may even be only a very noisy minority even in that generation, but it frightens the cowards we have for politicians, so that’s how things stand for now.
I would add that in America, passenger rail has long had a problem of profitability, or the lack thereof. A huge part of this is the enormous subsidies in the road system, running now for many years and many of which are hidden in sales taxes, property taxes, and in legal requirements such as mandated parking. This puts any public transportation enterprise at a severe disadvantage.
This tilted advantage to the automobile and trucking industry is why we lost private passenger rail service. Combine that with rate regulation that was in effect from 1906 to 1981, and you see why we also came close to losing even freight rail service. Hard to imagine for an industrial country of this size, but that was where things were headed–and even then, this country has maybe half the route-mileage it had at the peak in 1916, and only a fraction of the employees.
This means that any passenger rail operation is viewed as something that is incredibly risky, if not foolhardy. And despite fantasies of enterprise from the likes of a Dagney Taggart from Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” in the real world business men are very cautious, and in some cases also short-sighted.
It is worthy to note that all the private companies that have looked at building and operating the California system are from outside the United States.
It would be interesting to see how rapidly things would change if we would make the auto and truck pay their way as we expect a railroad to do, but that is not on the horizon. What might happen (although it is a long shot) could be the collapse of the Federal highway trust fund, caused by shenanigans in Washington (failure to pass a transportation bill, resulting in an expired fuel tax). That Federal money typically pays 80% of whatever it gets used for in the highway world, which is typically new construction or heavy rebuilding (such as bridge replacement). That alone may change a lot of things.
Maybe we should hope for such a failure? Egads, that’s a terrible thing to wish for. . .
VBobier Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 11:01 am
It might be the wake up call the USA needs to drown out the Nimbys and the alien Repugs from the Tea Party Planet, or to just drown them election wise in Nov of 2012. Now I hope that doesn’t happen, but currently with the Repugs in Congress wanting to defund this and defund that, I wouldn’t put It past them.
Max Wyss Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 7:31 am
It may also have something to do with the partner of the big firm; in France, Vinci, for example, nows that their partner (government) is a reliable partner which will stick to the contracts (to a big extent). Take that opposed to the recent events in north America (Florida, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Ohio, Toronto)… I guess that says it…
swing hanger Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 7:58 am
Exactly. No private company is going to invest in something when the possibility exists that the project will be canceled or de-funded with a change in political climate.
Andre Peretti Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 9:34 am
That’s why French public agencies were given statutes shielding them from political changes.
In the past, lack of credibility in public commitments led contractors to pad cost estimates to make sure they made a profit even if a project was altered or terminated by a new government. That time is remembered as the “gold-plated-highways” era.
Things are now different. For instance, Mitterrand’s socialist government judged the 50-year freeway concessions were giveaways but didn’t try to intervene. As a comparison, Vinci won a freeway build-and-operate contract in Germany and the concession will only last 20 years.
Sometimes, I have the impression the spoils system still survives in America.
Andre Peretti Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Speaking the spoils system I have some experience of it because we have it in Corsica. Being an island, it has an “internal autonomy statute”, which means that thing that wouldn’t happen in mainland France are considered normal here. For instance, when a new president of the Corsican assembly is elected, he fires all agency directors and replaces them by people who helped him get elected. This lately led to the appointment of remarkably incompetent directors. To illustrate it, I’ll tell you the story of the Corsican “autorails” (DMUs). Corsica needed 12 of them to replace the old ones which were 10 years past technical end of life. Any other French region would have hired consultants, generally an SNCF team to take charge of the bidding. Not our director of technical services. He decided rail was no rocket science and his technicians were good enough to select the best bidder. Spanish CAF was discarded as too expensive, and CFD, a small French builder was selected for €48 million total cost. The 12 trains were delivered while lengthy tests were being performed. There were many incidents: an exploded engine, several near-derailments and the tilting mechanism had to be blocked because cars touched the tunnel walls in curves.
An SNCF technical team was at last consulted and the verdict was that the trains were not adapted to Corsican tracks. There were also severe design flaws which would be very expensive to correct. A pity, because they are rather good-looking. Photo here
Meanwhile CFD went bankrupt and was bought up by CAF, the firm which lost the bid to CFD!
There are two sorts of incompetent people:
1- those who feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities and delay decisions until they have consulted everybody they know.
2- (the worst): those who are so incompetent that they don’t even realise they are incompetent. Unfortunately, we have some of those in Corsica.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 9:16 am
Simple answer: the project is entirely under the thumb of Parson Brinckerhoff. Why compete for a contract that you won’t get?
Andre Peretti Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 4:41 pm
Well, even is that is true I wouldn’t be too worried. PB is now part of the Balfour Beatty group whose code of conduct is: INTEGRITY – TEAMWORK – EXCELLENCE – RESPECT.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 5:56 pm
An important question–does the firm live up to its code of conduct?
Alon Levy Reply:
September 25th, 2011 at 7:48 pm
Yes, but only outside the US.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 11:20 am
Don’t be silly!
People are much the same everywhere. Some subset of them will get away with whatever they’re allowed to. Some of them will try to do the right thing and be crushed by evil social systems.
The problem with the US is not that engineers are especially inherently horrible people, but that they are actively encouraged to be so by a political system that is engineered for public squalor and private opulence. A bright young ethical person who tries to do the right thing by the public and the environment isn’t going to last long or rise very high or have any influence in our environment, and the results (human and build environment) are what we see.
There’s the concomitant problem with transportation engineers in the US being the very, very bottom of the barrel in terms of skill, experience, qualifications, openness to ideas, expectations of quality, etc, but that’s something that could be pretty rapidly self-corrected given a less toxic managerial and political climate.
People are equally shitty and/or decent everywhere, what with being the same species and all. The shittiness of environment in which they interact determines a great deal of where average behaviour falls on the decentness scale.
In short: put most of PB’s low-level CAD jockeys in front of a system with the units set to “metres” and working for people set to “don’t be evil” and they’d eventually spit out drawings as good as their Japanese or Swedish counterparts. (There is of course no hope of rehabilitating the senior people who have prospered under and perpetuate our current system to their own profit. Up against the wall with the lot.)
Alon Levy Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 12:51 pm
You know, this is exactly what I was getting at. Of course PB’s people in France or Turkey aren’t inherently better than its people in the US. I suspect often it’s the same consultants. It’s that France and Turkey have external oversight of public works, competitive bidding, and other trappings that the US lacks.
Andre Peretti Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 4:18 pm
PB engineers have worked in France with RATP, Alstom, Veolia, SIDEM (desalination units).
I can’t imagine French firms hiring them for any other reason than their competence.
I suppose PB send their best engineers abroad because they have to face international competition and keep the less brilliant in the US. If they have a captive market, why bother?
D. P. Lubic Reply:
September 26th, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Sounds like the real problem isn’t PB, but us–or more specifically, the people we elect to public office.
And us, really, because we elect those boobs, and make too much fuss over things like gun rights or whether the pol in an environmentalist or liberal or conservative–when we should ask ourselves how honest and competent and visionary they are. . .
Rewriting the Billy Joel lyrics, MTC “never gives up, never gives in” and never changes its mind:
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2011/09/mtc-reiterates-desire-move-san-francisco
For the East Bay some more of Richard’s barbed wire dildo, please.